Archive for August, 2017

It’s a square; it’s four squares! It’s RTV’s new media gallery! Let’s dive right in here and let you take it for a test drive! Check it out – http://fusion.realtourvision.com/tour.php?tourid=327951&html5=1#tourgallery Here’s a short video that talks about our new Media Gallery as well as a few other important virtual tour software updates from Real Tour Vision – https://youtu.be/vmkje-gRSYY What makes the Media Gallery so unique is that we give it to you in your Deliverables section as its own delivery link. If you have a customer that would prefer this style of a virtual tour over the others you can deliver it as a stand-alone product!

The Media Gallery has been fully integrated into our HTML 5 virtual tour player and shows up to the right of the player controls and is shaped like a Square made up of four square boxes. Just like a gallery! You’ll notice the responsive nature of the Media Gallery right away and it performs exceptionally well on phones, devices, iPads and even looks great on a desktop computer. We’ve taken the liberty here to add “View in Tour” links to the Media Gallery so users can be looking at a thumbnail of a panorama and instantly ‘JUMP’ into the interactive virtual tour by clicking the “View in Tour” button.

The Media Gallery displays all forms of virtual tour media and even plays back third party embedded media such as Vimeo, YouTube, or Matterport productions. It’s pretty slick!

By default, we have turned your media gallery ON for all of your virtual tours and you can find the controls for this in the “Buttons” sections of your virtual tour manager. If for some reason you would like it turned off you can do this by editing your buttons. Enjoy the new technology and stay tuned for the launch of our new HTML 5 Fusion Experience player. It’s almost done!!!

Building a photography and virtual tour business starts with a business plan. It might help to think of the structure of this plan the same way you would the building of a house. You work in stages, and that’s because there are some things you cannot do until you’ve done the other things first. For example; you start by building a foundation and these are the basics that you must have in place before you can move on. In this webinar, we’ll call Stage 1 in our plan The Foundation, since we need to have a strong platform upon which to build the rest the photography and virtual tour business. If we miss any of this, or if we don’t build our foundation well enough, then the rest of what we do on top of that will be much weaker.

Stage 2 in the building plan for a business is where we add a little more structure to the business, and we’ll call this stage The Frame. The things we do during this stage will help us get more clients and increase our revenue, building further upon The Foundation.

Once again we need to complete Stage 2 before we can move on to Stage 3, which we’ll call The Fitout, and that’s where we add the bricks, the doors, the windows and the furniture. Stage 3 is where we are fitting it out with the luxury features such as RTV’s robust virtual tour software or aerial drone services that help take us up a level in terms of quality and service offerings. After all, every home has a foundation and a frame, but it’s in the fitout where we separate the good home from the amazing home, and it’s the same with your business.

What’s important here is to understand the need to do some things first, and not to start trying to add a beautiful staircase and huge windows before we’ve got our foundation built. If that foundation or that frame is incomplete then these Stage 2 and 3 activities won’t be as effective as they would otherwise be, and you could seriously harm your reputation.

During this webinar we will be going through the various steps and activities that a photographer needs to accomplish at each stage of this plan, covering The Foundation, The Frame, and The Fitout. You’ll have a much better idea of what you need to do with your own business and when you need to do it, with helpful hints on:

What you must have on your website and why

Tips for how to get the most from your Facebook Page and Facebook ads

What you can learn from the way McDonald’s makes their burgers

How to keep clients coming back to you

What not to say in a marketing email

How to be a leader in your market

… and much more!

Our presenter for this webinar is Darryl Stringer, creator and founder of The Real Estate Photography System. Darryl started in real estate photography in 1998 and built a successful business in Brisbane, Australia, photographing billions of dollars worth of commercial and residential buildings. Today he helps photographers and virtual tour providers across the USA, Australia, Canada and Europe get more clients and build more profitable businesses. We hope you can join us on Tuesday, Sept 12th at 7:00 pm EST. You will be glad you did.

Real Tour Vision is pleased to announce our all new automated Tour Shredder! There’s no other way to say it; deleting unnecessary virtual tours from your account was always a painstaking endeavor. Users will now be able to shred multiple tours at once, which means significantly less time cleaning up old unwanted tours. Our new shredder will also remove the tours you shred from YouTube, and the tour provider rankings will no longer be reduced due to shredding tours. The old shredder was very underutilized and we feel these improvements will go a long way towards helping our customers keep their accounts clean. In the end this means more resources for maintaining a highly competitive virtual tour hosting platform.

Why shred? It’s really quite simple. RTV has created a first class virtual tour solution that requires lots of programming and maintenance to keep it (and YOU) ahead of the competition. This means it’s vital that we keep our hosting costs as low as possible so the most resources can be allocated towards programming for a better tomorrow!

You can help us with this mission and receive free tour credits in the process. Our new Tour Shredder allows you to easily locate and remove virtual tours within your account that are no longer needed. The Shredder suggests virtual tours for shredding based on past traffic and the status of your virtual tours. Virtual tours that have not received any traffic in over one year and or tours that have been marked as SOLD in the account will be automatically flagged for shredding. We will never recommend business type tours or tours that are not “For Sale” as a possible tour for shredding as you’re already paying an annual hosting fee to keep your business and commercial tours on our system.

How do you do it? That’s the best part since it’s VERY simple to use! To use the new Tour Shredder simply login to your RTV account at https://manage.realtourvision.com, click on the FSD tab along the top, then click on “Ready for Shredder”. The system will keep track of how many virtual tours you’ve removed from the system and pay you back in tour credits. We make it very easy for you to remove dozens, or even hundreds of tours at a time. The Shredder will also remove any associated YouTube productions in the process. Watch this short video to see the shredding process in action – https://youtu.be/NbHZ7AjMTS8

What’s in it for you? RTV credits customers with one free tour credit for every fifty virtual tours that are shred. Using our current virtual tour credit pricing, this payback is equal to having a 2% cash back program just for keeping your account clean. RTV was the very first virtual tour hosting service to reward customers for shredding old tours. To date we’re still the only company with such a program. Not only will you earn tour credits by shredding your old tours, but you’ll also feel good that you’re doing your part to help RTV keep the most resources allocated to programming.

How often should you shred? As your technology partner, RTV will now count on you to shred unnecessary tours from your account on a regular basis. Each month RTV will send you a reminder if the shredder identifies any new tours that can be shred. Be on the lookout for that email! If monthly shredding is not for you then you should minimally clean out your old and “sold” tours one a quarter throughout the year. It’s fast and it’s easy to do so just make it a part of your routine.

Policy Changes Coming Soon! While we know that most of our loyal customers will have no problem shredding old data, there will still be those that have gone out of business, left the industry or are simply too busy to shred. To address these cases RTV will soon be introducing new policy that will label accounts that do not use the Tour Shredder as “Abandoned” or “Distressed” depending on how many tours are being created in those accounts each month and how many “shreddable” tours those accounts contain. Accounts that are abandoned or just plain running inefficiently will receive notification from RTV encouraging the shredding of this unnecessary data. If the data is still left in those accounts RTV will then use the Tour Shredder on the customers behalf to bring these accounts back into balance.

A very big thanks to everyone for your continued support. We’ve very excited about all the new virtual tour technology that we’re able to provide. It’s you, our loyal customer base, that helps make all this possible. See you on our next webinar!

Summer is quickly passing us by! It’s easy for your virtual tour company clients to forget about how important professional photography is and how bright beautiful images captivate. Good marketers know that it’s vital to keep your clients thinking about you year round. Use this month’s RockPointeMarketing piece to remind them of your high quality professional photography and powerful marketing tools!

This flier is a fully customizable multifold piece with color and graphics that relax and entice like a beautiful summer day. Use our pre-written text to tell your clients what you have to offer, or customize it to send the exact message you want. This eye catching piece will look great in your client’s listing presentations and they will love how professional it looks as they explain why they only use professional photography and virtual tours for their listings.

Don’t wait until the skies have turned grey and the winds cold to remind them that beautiful pictures sell homes faster, and for more money.

Click here to watch a video on this unique and exciting marketing piece!

This piece is available for all Rockpointe Marketing subscribers as part of their membership subscription. If you aren’t currently a rockpointe marketing member, reach out today and ask how you can take advantage of all the benefits that Rockpointe Marketing has to offer.

This piece was created using Adobe Photoshop giving you the ability to customize it with software you already use, and providing the most professional look in today’s demanding world.

You’ve read about it on facebook and you’re seeing everyone around you gear up with virtual reality goggles. Last week RTV launched their virtual reality pilot program for their customer base. What now? How much should you be selling this for? How do you roll this out? Will people in your area be interested in this new burgeoning technology? How can you test the waters without making a huge investment? What is the investment and how does it all work? What additional equipment do you need to pull this off and offer it to your customer base?

We’re sure you’ll have these questions and many more as we dive further into the world of RTV’s new 3D VR product line. As you’ve heard us say, we certainly feel this is the next natural step for virtual tours and we want to take you there team as we feel the potential is HUGE! In our pilot tests that we ran on several trade shows up here in the Northern Michigan market we found this technology attracted large lines of real estate agents waiting to see the VR experience. More often than not those left the experience stating that they would certainly add the service to their virtual tour service as soon as it became available. Several stated boldly they would add the new service to every listing! One thing is for sure, we have their eyes and ears and they’re loving the product! Now it’s time to evaluate, learn and launch!

Come to the show and find out why Northern Michigan’s LARGEST RE/MAX office (500+ listings a year) just told BlueLaVaMedia they would be getting the VR Headset Tour upgrade on every listing!! This add-on really packs a punch team.

Join Jason LaVanture and Jay Stringham on Tuesday August 15th at 7:00 pm Eastern for The Formula 80, where we will discuss how RTV’s 3D VR tours are revolutionizing the virtual tour industry as well as everything you need to know about creating these tours. You will learn what gear is needed, how easy they are for photographers to shoot, as well as strategies to start selling these tours in your area! The best part is, offering 3D VR tours is very economical and more than likely uses the gear you already have.